mercurial was our Word of the Day on 09/16/2012. Hear the podcast!

Examples of mercurial in a Sentence

Few moments in English history have been more hungry for the future, its mercurial possibilities and its hope of richness, than the spring of 1603. —Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries, 2003

Though you could see all three places in one day, each of them makes you want to stay or to keep returning to watch the effects of the changing weather and the mercurial Sicilian light. —Francine Prose, Atlantic, December 2002

Some scientists suggest that because manic-depressive patients are ever riding the bio-chemical express between emotional extremes, their brains end up more complexly wired and remain more persistently plastic than do the brains of less mercurial sorts. —Natalie Angier, New York Times, 12 Oct. 1993

Still grinning, still miming, he samba-ed across the floor … and started in on the dishes with a vigor that would have prostrated his mercurial cousin. —T. Coraghessan Boyle, Harper's, October 1987

the boss's mood is so mercurial that we never know how he's going to react to anything

Recent Examples of mercurial from the Web

All that was torture for Republicans, who had to walk a razor-thin line between distancing themselves from what the president said, did or tweeted — and keeping the mercurial president on their good side.

The stakes for Trump's speech are high, with political watchers and the world community anxiously waiting to see what the mercurial president — who has had strained interactions with some longtime U.S. allies since taking office — will say.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'mercurial.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

The Roman god Mercury ("Mercurius" in Latin) was the messenger and herald of the gods and also the god of merchants and thieves. (His counterpart in Greek mythology is Hermes.) He was noted for his eloquence, swiftness, and cunning, and the Romans named what appeared to them to be the fastest-moving planet in his honor. The Latin adjective derived from his name, mercurialis, meaning "of or relating to Mercury," was borrowed into English in the 14th century as "mercurial." Although the adjective initially meant "born under the planet Mercury," it came to mean also "having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury or the influence of the planet Mercury," and then "unpredictably changeable."